Category Archives: Conference

Agronomy, AgTech, Automation, Conference, Controlled Traffic Systems, Data Analytics, Drainage, events, Fertiliser, Innovation, Irrigation, LandWISE 2015, LandWISE People, Membership, MicroFarm, New Crops, Nutrients, Orchard, Orcharding, Plant Health, Planting, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Robotics, Sensing, Soil, Tillage, Uncategorized, Vegetables, viticulture, Water, Weeds

Memberships Open for 2020-2021

Calling all followers and friends of LandWISE, we invite you to become a financial member this year.

Your support is vital for LandWISE to continue doing what we do. We rely on farmer support to ensure the backing of new projects, discover new areas for research or technology adoption, and to fund field days, workshops and the development of practical resources. 

LandWISE Membership is a great way to support the mission of sustainable production in New Zealand, and as a member you’ll benefit from:

  • Results from on-farm trials
  • Projects focussed on real farmer and grower problems
  • Regional field days and workshops on a range of topics from conserving soil to nutrient management and novel fertiliser technology
  • A discounted registration at the 2021 LandWISE Conference
  • Subscription to our annual LandWISE News publication

Membership is open to all who are interested in primary production and share our values. We hope you’ll consider becoming a member, or forward this on to a non-member if you already are!

Sign up here >

Agronomy, Conference, events, Fertiliser, Nutrients, Soil, Uncategorized, Vegetables

Reducing Nitrogen Losses from Intensive Vegetable Production – Panel Discussion

LandWISE: Promoting Sustainable Crop Production
LandWISE: Promoting Sustainable Crop Production
Reducing Nitrogen Losses from Intensive Vegetable Production - Panel Discussion
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Thank you to those who joined us for the Live Panel Discussion with June’s podcast guests. We were thrilled to get so many participants in our first live webcast, and appreciated the rich conversation as a result of the varied viewpoints from panel presenters and listeners.

For those of you who weren’t able to make it to the Live Panel on Reducing Nitrogen Losses from Intensive Vegetable Production we recorded the discussion and you can listen to it above.

The Panel Discussion was presented on June 30th, after our presenters each featured on the LandWISE Podcast. If you’re interested to hear more from Jay Clarke, Luke Posthuma, Georgia O’Brien or Charles (Merf) Merfield, you can listen to their podcast episodes here:

All Podcast Episodes here >

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news from LandWISE including future panel webcasts, and podcast episodes.

Agronomy, Conference, Fertiliser, Innovation, Nutrients, Orchard, Plant Health, Projects, Research, Soil, Vegetables, Weeds

Introducing our Podcast

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Unable to gather for our popular annual conference in May, but not wanting to you to miss hearing new ideas about  sustainable production, we joined the virtual conference crowd.

We are pleased to present “LandWISE: Promoting Sustainable Crop Production” a podcast that will bring the insights of lead researchers, technologists, and farmers to listeners from all over the Ag and Hort industry. Each month has a theme with guests joining on the last Friday of the month as a discussion panel.

This month we’re presenting “Reducing Nitrogen Losses from Intensive Vegetable Cropping” starting with our first guest Jay Clarke, Director of Woodhaven Gardens.

Woodhaven was named the Regional Supreme Winner at the Horizons Ballance Farm Environment Awards in April 2020. We are looking forward to hearing how Jay and the Clarke family have transformed Woodhaven’s growing practices to achieve this outstanding recognition.

JUNE: Reducing Nitrogen Losses from Intensive Vegetable Cropping

 
Growers Making Changes (Jay Clarke – Woodhaven Gardens) Friday 5th June
On-Farm Trials with Growers (Luke Posthuma, LandWISE) Friday 5th June
A Grower-Friendly Nutrient Budget Template (Georgia O’Brien– LandWISE) Friday 12th June
Cover and Catch Cropping (Charles Merfield – BHU Future Farming Centre) Friday 19th June
LIVE PANEL DISCUSSION – send in your questions to info@landwise.org.nz Friday 26th June 1:00 pm
Listen to Podcasts online here >
Listen on Spotify >

On the last Friday of the month – look out for our live Panel Discussion where we bring together all of the guests from the show and ask them your questions.

Email us your questions to info@landwise.org.nz

Made possible by our conference sponsors:

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, Drainage, events, Innovation, LandWISE People, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Robotics, Soil, Tillage

Nutrient Budgeting made easy…

We’re pleased to announce the release of our Nutrient Budgeting Templates.  Designed to support vegetable growers to budget fertiliser use according to good management practice guidelines the A4 pdf templates rely on nutrient recommendations from Reid & Morton (2019). Crop yield predictions and soil fertility testing are used to determine the optimum rate of Nitrogen and Phosphorus to apply, based on the best trial data NZ has for 12 different vegetable crops.

The LandWISE Nutrient Budget Templates bring together this resource along with FAR’s Nitrate Quick Test Mass Balance tool which allows growers to enter soil nitrate levels using the Nitrate Quick Test. This test can provide growers with soil nitrate levels in less than an hour for about $1. FAR’s tool reliably converts nitrate concentrations (ppm) into kg N/ha.

Nutrient budgets are becoming a necessary process to document the movement of nutrients on and off-farm, and justify fertiliser applications. Nutrient budgets can be used to develop a fertiliser plan, where each paddock or management unit has a clear strategy to maintain, build or mine soil nutrient levels.

View or download the templates below:

Phosphorus Budget Template 02-20

Nitrogen Budget Template 02-20

The Nutrient Budget Templates have been developed as part of Future Proofing Vegetable Production, a three-year project funded by MPI’s Sustainable Farming Fund, Ballance, Horizons, Gisborne District Council, and Potatoes NZ.

We are keen to hear from those using the templates so please get in touch if you have any questions or feedback.

Conference, Membership, Projects, Uncategorized

Memberships 2019 – 2020

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Last week we sent out our annual print newsletter, along with membership renewal invoices to our LandWISE members. If you are a financial member but have not yet received this, please get in touch with us.

The annual newsletter this year includes:

LandWISE membership fees support our mission to promote sustainable production – your donations allow us to continue extending crucial research to New Zealand’s primary producers in Horticulture. We are proud to have been supporting growers to adopt sustainable practices for 20 years, thanks to our generous sponsors, and LandWISE members we hope to continue doing this work for many more years to come.

If you’re interested in becoming a member please fill out your details here, and we will send you and invoice ($100 + GST) for the year.

Conference, LandWISE People

Highlights from LandWISE 19

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LandWISE 19 “Rethinking Best Pratice” wrapped up less than a week ago, and we’re already in the planning stages for 2020. However, before we get too carried away with that, we reflect on this year’s conference and its highlights.

We were honoured to have two guest speakers join us from the US thanks to our Platinum sponsor AGMARDT – Brad Bernhard from the University of Illinois, and Frank Forcella from the University of Minnesota (now retired).

Brad’s presentation was well received, with the message of soil testing, and matching nitrogen applications to plant demand and yield potential very relevant for the growers whom attended. Brad’s PhD work was also well delivered with on-theme humour interspersed with the corn and nitrogen content.

Frank’s presentation “Weeding with Walnuts” focused on abrasive weeding, and was well placed as part of our session on Managing Herbicide Resistance. Frank’s abrasion weeding technique and research was on display at the MicroFarm field visit on Thursday afternoon. Thanks to Trevor James and AgResearch for lending us his abrasion weeding machine. This was a popular demo to view and test out on the broadleaf weeds in our Barley crop.

We are very grateful to all of our invited speakers, without whom we would not be able to present a new LandWISE conference each and every year. There was particularly good feedback about the presentations from the “Something Rather Different” session on Day 1 where two farmers and one researcher presented their experiences cultivating markets for and growing novel crops in New Zealand. We look forward to hearing more about NZ grown Bananas, Hemp, and Quinoa.

A massive thank you must also go to our kind sponsors who made this conference possible. At the platinum level HBRC, AGMARDT, and BASF helped us very generously, we also appreciate our gold sponsors Vegetables NZ Inc, Process Vegetables NZ, ARAG Australia / SenseFly, Potatoes NZ, and Power Farming.

Another highlight for the LandWISE team was seeing Hugh Ritchie receive the inaugural LandWISE Sustainability Award, as well as being bestowed with the honour of Life Member. Hugh has been involved with LandWISE since its humble beginnings in a maize paddock in 1999. Hugh also acted as chairman of the LandWISE board for over 10 years, and since stepping down has remained a staunch supporter of our work and projects. As part of receiving Life Membership, Hugh was gifted with an engraved shovel with which, judging by the picture below, we think he was quite pleased…

Finally, we thank all the conference attendees for their interest, participation and engagement with the conference content. We are very lucky to attract growers, farmers, researchers, and industry people from such a wide array of backgrounds and industries – the variety and diversity of conference attendees has significantly contributed to the quality of discussion and network building.

If you missed this year’s LandWISE conference, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter, and stay in touch for updates about LandWISE 2020 – we look forward to seeing you there!

 

Conference, Innovation, Irrigation, LandWISE People, New Crops, Tillage

LandWISE 2019: Best Practice Changes

Hugh Ritchie – Honorary Life Member

Drumpeel Farms has been run as a continuous mixed cropping farm since 1962 but had been cropped prior to that time. Key to the ongoing success of this farm has been a 5-year rotation utilizing legumes, cereals, seeds and stock.

During the 70’s a significant injection of lime was used to lift performance, irrigation was introduced in 2000 which provided resilience and opportunity for new and higher value options. This was closely followed by a move to reduced tillage eventually progressing to direct drilling and strip-tillage. These changes were driven consciously by a desire to make good business decisions but also there was an underlying understanding of importance of soil health and with limited water a need to be as efficient as possible with that water.

Good farm practice is an ever-evolving status. What was good in the 60’s is now modified and the 2000’s are completely different from today. Going forward,best practice will need to incorporate carbon zero thinking and (what will be even harder) meet public expectation even if that expectation does not reflect scientific findings, for example Roundup acceptance in the marketplace. Currently our business of good practice and reduced cultivation relies heavily on a chemical herbicide program.

Facing these new and emerging issues means a further refinement of good practice and even completely new enterprises to utilize our soils, climate and water resources with the aim of creating a sustainable business.

Drumpeel Farms is a family business Hugh runs in conjunction with Sharon and their four children. It is a mixed enterprise business with livestock, seeds and cereals and process vegetables as the main components.

They produce peas, beans, carrots, sweetcorn and some export squash, along with carrot and onion seed. The business is exploring the options for kiwifruit and apples as a way to increase value from the soils and water resources available to us.

As a grower Hugh has always contributed to industries in which he is involved. Currently a director of Hortnz and chair of the Foundation for Arable Research board, a member of Process Vegetables NZ and a director of Water Holdings, Central Hawke’s Bay, Hugh recently retired from the LANDWISE and Irrigation NZ boards.

Conference, Innovation, LandWISE People, viticulture

LandWISE 2019: The Vineyard of Tomorrow

John van der Linden  – LandWISE Board Member

Epitomising this years theme of “Rethinking Best Practice” John van der Linden from Villa Maria Estate discussed the “Future Vineyard”

Future Vineyard – Inverse Goblet

Often people’s future thinking is constrained by their past practises and experiences and so many ‘innovations’ are often only ‘improved ways of doing the same thing’. Two main considerations went into designing the vineyard of tomorrow:

  1. How to use land more effectively (more high quality grapes/ha)
  2. How to grow grapes more efficiently (eliminating, minimising, or combining operations)

Some solutions in this space that Villa Maria is trialling include:

  • “Trunk-Wrapping”: eliminates disbudding, or avoiding disbudding altogether and combining it with pruning.
  • “Sustainable Vineyard Floors”: eliminating or at least drastically reducing the numerous weed control and mowing passes by using different inter-row species and management techniques.
  • “Inverse Goblet” style vines: growing staked vines in an isometric pattern can provide advantages over current planting arrangements (parallel rows)

John van der Linden is a Viticulturist with Villa Maria Estate, NZ’s most awarded wine company. He has developed a wealth of viticultural experience and knowledge having grown up on a vineyard, owned and managed his own vineyards, studied and lectured in Viticulture and worked as a Viticulturist in Hawkes Bay and Marlborough for some major NZ wine companies.  One of John’s philosophies is that ‘there is always a better way’ and so innovation, sustainability and continuous improvement play a big part in his role.

John’s interests include family, rowing, cycling, swimming, guitar, Hi-Fi, technology, flying, design & architecture.

 

 

Agronomy, AgTech, Conference, Drainage, events, Fertiliser, Nutrients, Orchard, Precision Agriculture, Projects, Research, Soil, Vegetables, Weeds

LandWISE 2019: Rethinking Best Practice

22-23 May 2019
Havelock North

Do we really know why we farm as we do? Or are we constrained in ways we just don’t see?

Often our current practices have evolved over a very long time – thousands of years of human history, decades of technology developments. Remember the space shuttle and the horse’s rear? We’ve long forgotten some of the reasons behind what we do, so maybe it is time for a reset!

LandWISE was awarded four significant new projects that started in 2018. They cover enhanced GPS, precision drainage for orchards, nitrates in fresh vegetable production and herbicide resistance management. They’ll be among the topics discussed at LandWISE 2019.

LandWISE 2019 Platinum Sponsors

LandWISE 2019 Gold Sponsors

Thank you to our other sponsors…

Agronomy, Conference, New Crops, Research, Vegetables

LandWISE 2019: Kiwi Quinoa

Growing the Andean Superfood here in New Zealand

  

Eight years ago, Dan and Jacqui Cottrell set off on their Overseas Experience – it was in South America that they encountered the high protein superfood staple of the Andean people, quinoa, and considered “Could quinoa be grown back at home on the Cottrell family farm?”

Fast forward to now and Dan and Jacqui have recently harvested their fourth and largest quinoa crop on their cool climate sheep and beef property on the Taihape-Napier Road, just out of Moawhango in the Central Plateau.

Quinoa is a high protein seed with an impressive nutritional offering, so much so that NASA stated “while no single food contains all the nutrients necessary to live, quinoa comes as close as any” and have included it in their long term space travel.

After a lot of research, communication with international quinoa producers and a variety trial – the couple identified a particular saponin-free variety of quinoa that really suited their cool climate and short growing season. 

Through many years of trial and error, Dan and Jacqui have ironed out a growing practice that suits their quinoa and their wider farming operation.  Kiwi Quinoa is grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides.  Their quinoa is grown as part of pasture renewal program and permanent pasture is planted shortly after the crop is harvested in February.

With a shift in consumer attitudes around food choices – the demand for sustainably produced, plant based proteins is on the rise.  Recent studies in the US have shown that consumption of alternative proteins, like quinoa and other plant proteins, is growing at a rate of 4-10 times faster than conventional proteins.

Jacqui and Dan remain very supportive of traditional proteins, but also see tremendous opportunity for New Zealand agriculture in not only the plant protein space but with a shift into more regenerative ways of farming our land.

Want to know more?

REGISTER HERE FOR LandWISE 2019!